Wild Tales from the Wild

Saad Bin Jung hails from the erstwhile royal families of Bhopal, Pataudi, and the aristocratic family of Paigah of Hyderabad so it was natural that he grew up with cricket and love for wildlife in his blood. But what was not normal was the streak of independence and a desire to remain far from the maddening crowd, hugging the solitude of nature. Born in Delhi in 1960, educated in Hyderabad, Saad flirted with cricket for a few years where he achieved international recognition, but an illness at the age of twenty saw him walk out of the game and take to conservation and wildlife with great passion. He has dedicated his life to finding solutions to the man–animal conflict. In his endeavour to conserve wildlife, he has created awareness against ills that plague rural Indian society and has provided vocational training to the locals of the areas he worked in (near Bandipur, Nagarhole, and Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary of Karnataka), giving them hope and a way to make a legitimate living. He was a member of the Wildlife Advisory Board of Karnataka for a few years.

He is the author of Subhan and I: My Adventures with Angling Legend of India, as well as a columnist, a conservationist, an angler, and a photographer. He runs a very successful jungle resort Bush Betta near Bandipur, an angling camp in the heart of Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, and a top-of-the-line boutique and exclusive wildlife camp on the banks of Kabini river near Nagarhole National Park (also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park) called The Bison, all of which he had founded.